From Tecklenburg to Malta: Count Otto I and the Knights of Malta

Count Otto I of Tecklenburg and the knights who would one day rule Malta

Our holiday region in the Tecklenburger Land and the sun-warmed island of Malta feel like two different worlds – yet a single thread ties them together across more than 800 years. It doesn’t begin in Valletta, but here in the north of Germany.

In 1245, Count Otto I of Tecklenburg gave an estate in Lage – today part of the municipality of Rieste, just north of the Tecklenburger Land – to the Order of St John, the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. From that gift grew the Commandery of Lage (Kommende Lage).

The Hospitallers settled there before 1260; by 1262 twelve members of the order lived in Lage. Over the following decades the commandery became the largest house of the Lower-Rhenish-Westphalian bailiwick – 45 brothers were based there by 1341 – and, alongside Steinfurt, one of the most important settlements of the order in all of north-western Germany: wealthy, richly landed and the goal of a pilgrimage to the “Lage Cross”, a crucifix consecrated in 1315.

Wealth attracts envy: in 1384 the Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück had the commandery stormed and the knights driven out – an assault that earned him excommunication. In 1395 the Order regained Lage and rebuilt it.

From Lage to Malta: the eight-pointed cross

The very order that farmed the fields of Lage went on to shape world history. After the Hospitallers lost Rhodes in 1522, Emperor Charles V granted them the island of Malta in 1530. They ruled it until 1798, when Napoleon expelled them – and became known worldwide as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Their emblem: the eight-pointed cross everyone now calls the Maltese Cross.

So the white cross that flies over Valletta is the same symbol the knights first set into the soil of Lage. That legacy is still on show today: since 1959 the coat of arms of the municipality of Rieste has depicted the silver gatehouse of the commandery, crowned by the eight-pointed Cross of St John.

The faith endured too. The pilgrimage to Lage has continued for some 800 years: during the “Kreuztracht”, pilgrims carry an old cross weighing around 135 kilograms around the pilgrimage church of St John the Baptist. The commandery remained a house of the order until 1810; its listed 17th-century buildings sit picturesquely among moats fed by an arm of the river Hase.

From our holiday apartments in Brochterbeck it’s only about a 45-minute drive north to Rieste-Lage – easily combined with a day at the Alfsee lake. Whether you’re drawn to the quiet hills of the Tecklenburger Land or the sunlit coast of Malta, you’re following a path the Knights of St John walked long before you.

Two pillars of the Order: Lage and Steinfurt

Lage did not stand alone. About 60 kilometres to the south-west, in Steinfurt, the lords of Steinfurt had founded the Steinfurt Commandery (Johanniterkommende Steinfurt) even earlier – back in the 12th century, well before Count Otto’s gift. Both became the wealthiest and most powerful houses of the Order in the region, both outlasted the Reformation as Catholic islands, and both were secularised in the Napoleonic era – Lage in 1810, Steinfurt in 1811.

The houses were governed in districts called bailiwicks, and both Lage and Steinfurt belonged to the Bailiwick of Westphalia (Ballei Westfalen). A striking parallel: in 1341 each commandery numbered exactly 45 members of the Order. Yet Steinfurt was the head house: from around 1400 its Commander (Komtur) also led the Westphalian bailiwick – so the knights on Count Otto’s land at Lage answered to the leadership in Steinfurt. Only after the Thirty Years’ War did the bailiwick’s seat move to Münster.

One family tree: the House of Bentheim ties them together

In the end, even the founding families of the two great commanderies were a single kinship. When Count Otto I of Tecklenburg died in 1263, his male line came to an end. Through his daughter Heilwig, who had married Otto II of Bentheim-Tecklenburg, the County of Tecklenburg passed to the House of Bentheim.

The lordship of Steinfurt later came to the same house, which split into two closely related lines: Bentheim-Tecklenburg and Bentheim-Steinfurt – and after 1816 the property of the Steinfurt commandery itself fell to the House of Bentheim-Steinfurt. The families that shaped both Hospitaller houses for centuries were thus branches of one and the same family tree, reaching back to Count Otto I. From the fields of the Tecklenburger Land to the bastions of Malta, they all carried the same eight-pointed cross.

The Wallbrücke in Brochterbeck: a Freistuhl and the treaty of 1236

The connection to Malta doesn’t begin somewhere far away – it begins just a few minutes’ walk from our holiday apartment, at the Wallbrücke in Brochterbeck. In the Middle Ages this was the site of a Freistuhl, an open-air public court where justice was pronounced and disputes were settled.

In 1236, a treaty between the County of Tecklenburg and the Bishopric of Osnabrück was concluded and sworn at the Wallbrücke itself. It ended the bitter quarrel over the income and privileges of the Osnabrück church-advocacy (Kirchvogtei) – a dispute that had cost Count Otto I dearly. Among the ministerials who swore the treaty was Konrad I of Brochterbeck.

And here the circle closes: it is the same Count Otto I of Tecklenburg. Just nine years after making his peace with Osnabrück at the Wallbrücke, in 1245 he gave his estates to the Order of St John and founded the Commandery of Lage (see above). The little bridge in Brochterbeck and the knights who would one day rule Malta are thus two chapters of a single story – barely a decade and a few kilometres apart.

Today the Wallbrücke is a quiet spot at the edge of the village – a rewarding short detour during a stay at our holiday apartment in Brochterbeck.

By the way – there’s also the tale of the Brochterbeck teenager who once saved this very bridge from demolition, all because he wanted to test out a fax machine. But that’s a story for its own post …